MY KINSMAN AND I RIDE DIFFERENT WAYS.
Two days later, being deputed upon some errand, the import of which I
have forgotten, I chanced to pass by the barrier of the Rue de
Grenelle, and a travelling-carriage drew up at my side. My eyes were
bent upon the ground, so that I took no heed of it until I heard my
name cried. I looked up, and there was my Lord Bolingbroke at the
window.
"You see, Lawrence," he said, "I leave Paris as I promised Stair, and
I travel into Dauphiné."
"But by a roundabout road," I answered eagerly. "It is possible that
you might take St. Germains on the way;" for it had reached my ears
that Queen Mary of Modena was desirous to try her persuasions upon
him.
"No," he returned, with a shake of the head; "I have my poor friends
in England to consider. I should provide a fine excuse for ill-using
them if I made common cause with the Chevalier. They have served me;
it is my turn to serve them; and I shall be better employed that way
than in weaving fairy-stories with Queen Abdicate.--But what's the
trouble?" he continued, with a change of tone. "You walked as though
the world had withered at your feet."
"Nay," I answered, with a laugh, "there is no trouble. I was merely
wondering----" and I hesitated.
"At what?" he asked curiously.
"At the rule which bids me sleep with my chamber-window closed," I
returned, with a laugh. And, indeed, it was a question you had reason
to put during this hot spring, when from behind your stifling panes
you looked out at night across Paris lying cool and spacious beneath a
purple sky. But the truth is that all these regulations which were
instituted to discipline the novice to a habit of obedience, were
beginning to work me into a ferment of irritability; and through the
months that followed, April, May, and June, the irritability increased
in me to a spirit of rebellion. At times I felt a mad desire to rise
in my seat and hurl defiance, and with that defiance my books, at my
tutors' heads. The desire surged up within my veins, became active in
every limb, and I had to set my teeth until my jaws ached to repress
it. At times sick and dispirited, I counted up the years to come; I
passed them through my thoughts even as I passed the beads of my
rosary beneath my thumb, and even as the beads of my rosary, they were
monotonously alike one to the other.
Doubtless, too, the recollection of the picture I had seen at the
monastery of the Chartreux helped to intensify my unrest. For it abode
vividly in my memory, and the menace I drew from it grew more and more
urgent as the days slipped on. I should note, however, that a certain
change took place in the manner in which it presented itself. I could
still see, I could still hear the figure speaking. But it did not so
much cry "Hypocrite!" as thunder out, in the very lines of the
Carmelite preacher, "The Eve of St. Bartholomew--the Eve of St.
Bartholomew."
Of course, as the rector had declared, I was under no vows or
obligation to persist in my novitiate. But I felt the very knowledge
that I was free to be in some way a chain about my ankle constraining
me. I took a cast back to the period of my boyhood when enrolment
amongst the priests of the Jesuit order had been the aim of a fervid
ambition; when the thought of that body, twenty thousand in number,
spread throughout the earth, in Japan, in the Indies, in Peru, and
working one and all in a consonant vigilance for the glory of their
order, had stirred me with its sublimity; and I sought--with what
effort and despair!--to recreate those earlier visions. For to count
them fanciful seemed treachery; to turn deliberately aside from them
was evident instability.
So much I have deemed it necessary to set down concerning my
perplexities at this time, since they throw, I think, a light upon the
events which I am to relate. For I was shortly afterwards to depart
from this safe corner, and wander astray just as I wandered when I
lost myself in the labyrinth of Blackladies. And the explanation I
take to be this--for it is merely in explanation and not at all in
extenuation that I put this forward--I had clean broken from the one
principle by which, however clumsily, I had hitherto guided my life,
and had as yet grappled to no other with sufficient steadiness of
faith to make it useful as a substitute.
It was on the Saturday of the first week of July that I left the
Jesuit College. I was standing at my window about two of the
afternoon, and looking down at the river and the bridge which crossed
it. I had a clear view of the bridge from end to end betwixt the
gables of a house, and I noticed that it was empty, save for one man,
who jogged across on horseback--or rather, so it seemed at the height
from which I looked, for when I saw the horse close at hand a short
while afterwards, I found reason to believe that the man had galloped.
I stood watching him idly until he crossed out on to the quay; and I
remember that the refectory bell rang just as he turned the corner and
passed out of my sight. Towards the end of dinner, a message was
brought to me that the rector desired to see me in his study as soon
as we were risen from table. This time, however, it was in no
hesitancy or trepidation that I waited on him, but rather with a
springing heart. For let him but dismiss me from the college, and here
was an end to all the torture of my questionings--an unworthy thought,
you will say, and, indeed, none knew that more surely than myself.
On the contrary, however, the rector received me with a benevolent
eye. "I have strange news for you, my son," said he, with a glance
towards a stranger who stood apart in the window; and the stranger
stepped forward hurriedly, as though he would have the telling of the
news himself. He was a man of middle height and very close-knit,
though of no great bulk, dark in complexion, and possessed, as far as
I could judge, of an honest countenance.
"Mr. Clavering," he began, with a certain deference, and after these
months of "brother" and "my son" the manner of his address struck upon
my ears with a very pleasant sound, "I was steward to your uncle, Sir
John Rookley, at Blackladies in Cumberland."
"Was?" said I.
"Until Monday was se'nnight," says he.
"Then what may be your business with me?" I asked sharply. For there
was throughout England such a division of allegiance as set even the
members of a family on opposite sides the while they maintained to the
world an appearance of concord, so that many a dismissed servant
carried away with him secret knowledge wherewith to make his profit. I
was therefore pretty sharp with the steward, and quickly repeated the
question.
"Then what may you have to ask of me?"
"That you will be pleased to continue me in the office," he returned
humbly.
I stood cluttered out of my senses, looking from the servant to the
rector, and from the rector again to the servant, with I know not what
wild fancies choking at my throat.
"It is true," said the rector. "Your uncle died of an apoplexy a
fortnight back."
"But he has a son," I gasped out
"Sir John quarrelled with Mr. Jervas two days before he died,"
answered the steward. "Blackladies comes to you, Mr. Clavering, and I
have travelled from Cumberland to acquaint you of the fact."
It was true! My heart so throbbed and beat that I could not utter a
word. I could not so much as think, no, not even of my uncle or my
cousin. It is true that I had seldom seen the one, and never the
other. I was conscious only of an enlarging world. But my eyes chanced
at the moment to meet the rector's. His gaze was fixed intently upon
my face, and with a sudden feeling of shame I dropped my eyes to the
ground.
"My son," he said, drawing me a little on one side and speaking with
all kindliness, as though in answer to my unspoken apology, "it may be
well that you can do better service as the master of Blackladies. You
will have the power and the means to help effectually, and such help
we need in England;" and as I still continued silent, "If you become a
priest, by the laws of your country you lose that power, and surely
the Church will share in the loss. And are you fitted for a priest?"
He looked at me keenly. "I spoke my doubts to you some while back, and
I do not think they went much astray."
I did not answer him, nor did he wait for an answer, but took me by
the arm and led me back to the steward.
"My cousin quarrelled with his father. Then what has become of him?" I
asked, still in an indecision.
"I do not know, sir. Most like he is in France."
"In France?" I cried with a start. For the answer flashed a suspicion
into my mind which--prove it true, and it was out of my power to
accept the inheritance! "In France? And the substance of the quarrel?"
"It is not for me, sir, to meddle in the right or wrong of it," he
began.
"Nor did I ask you to," I cut him short "I ask you for the bare fact."
He looked at me for a second like one calculating his chances.
"Mr. Jervas sided with the Jacobites," and the words struck my hopes
dead. My world dwindled and straitened as swiftly as it had enlarged.
"Then I can hardly supplant him," I said slowly, "for I side with that
party too."
The steward's eyes gleamed very brightly of a sudden.
"Ah!" said I, "you, too, have the cause at heart"
"So much, sir, that I make bold to forget my station and to urge you
to accept the bequest. There is no supplanting in the case. For if you
refuse Blackladies it will not fall to Mr. Jervas." He drew from his
pocket a roll of paper fastened with a great seal, and held it out to
me. I broke the seal, and opened it. It contained a letter from Sir
John's attorney at Appleby, and a copy of the will which set out very
clearly that I was to possess the house and lands of Blackladies with
all farms, properties, and rents attached thereto, upon the one
condition, that I should not knowingly divert so much as the value of
a farthing into the pockets of Mr. Jervas Rookley.
So far I had read when I looked up at the steward in a sudden
perplexity.
"I do not understand why Sir John should disinherit his son, who is,
at all events, a Protestant, because he is a Jacobite, in favour of
myself, who am no less a Jacobite, and one of the true faith besides."
The steward made a little uneasy movement of impatience. "I was not so
deep in my master's confidence that I can answer that."
I held out the will to him, though my fingers clung to it. "I cannot,"
I said, "take up the inheritance."
It was not, however, the steward, but the rector who took the paper
from me. He read it through with great deliberation, and then--
"You did not finish," he said, and pointed his finger to the last
clause.
"I saw no use in reading more, Father," I replied; but I took the will
again and glanced at the clause. It was to this effect: that if I
failed to observe the one condition or did not enter into possession
from whatsoever cause, the estate should become the property of the
Crown.
"I cannot help it," I said. "To swell the treasury of the Hanoverian
by however so little, is the last thing I would wish to do, but I
cannot help it. Mr. Jervas Rookley suffers in that he is what I pride
myself on being. I cannot benefit by his sufferings," and I folded up
the will.
"There is another way, sir," suggested the steward, diffidently.
"Another way?" I asked.
"Which would save the estate and save Mr. Jervas too from this
injustice."
"Explain!" I cried. "Explain!" For indeed it grieved me beyond measure
that I should pass these revenues to one whom I could not but consider
an usurper.
"I do but propose it, sir, because I see you scruple to----" he began.
"Nay, man!" I exclaimed, starting forward, "I need no apologies. Show
me this way of yours!"
"Why, sir, the will says the Crown. It names no names. If you infringe
the condition or refuse the estate, Blackladies goes to the Crown.
But," and he smiled cunningly, "it is not likely that King James, did
he come to the throne, would accept of a bequest which comes to him
because the rightful owner served his cause so well."
I nodded my head. "That is true. King James would restore it," I said.
"To the rightful owner," said he.
"So be it, then!" I cried. "I will hold Blackladies in trust for
Jervas Rookley," and then I stopped. "But meanwhile Mr. Jervas Rookley
must shift for himself," I added, bethinking me of the condition.
The steward smiled again. "If you knew him, sir, you would not fear
for him on that account;" and he continued, "You will return with me
to England?"
"Yes, but not now," I exclaimed, for all at once a new resolve had
taken shape within my mind. There was no word in the will about my
politics. Sir John was acquainted with them when he made the will. I
was free to use Blackladies as I chose.
"Wait you here in Paris," I cried to the steward, and came of a sudden
to an awkward pause. "You brought money with you?" I asked.
"I have an order upon Mr. Waters the banker," he replied.
"Good," I said, my spirits rising with my voice. "Get it cashed--now,
at once, and bring the money back to me. But be quick, be quick. For I
have business in Lorraine."
"In Lorraine?" exclaimed the steward, and his face flashed to an
excitement equal with my own.
"In Lorraine," I repeated, "and at Bar-le-Duc."
He waited for no further explanation, but made his reverence to the
rector, a low bow to me, and departed on his errand. I began to pace
impatiently about the room, already looking for his return, even as I
heard him pass beneath the window.
"Was I not right, my son?" asked the rector. "You walk, you speak,
like a man refreshed. And yet--and yet----"
He came over to me and laid a hand upon my shoulder, while a great
gravity overspread his face, and somehow at the touch of his hand, at
the mere sight of his face, my overweening confidence burst like a
bubble. For looking through my eyes he seemed to search my soul, and
in his eyes I seemed to see, as in a mirror, the naked truth of all
the folly that he noted there.
"These are the last words," he went on, "which I shall speak to the
pupil, and I would have you bear them as the crest and motto of your
life. I would have you beware of a feverish zeal. To each man I do
solemnly believe there comes one hour of greatness, and only one. It
is not the hour of supreme happiness, or of a soaring fortune, as
worldlings choose to think, but the hour when God tries him upon His
touchstone. And for that hour each man must watch if he would not
fail. Indeed, it brings the test which proves--nay, makes--him man,
and in God's image, too, or leaves him lower than the brutes; for he
has failed. Therefore watch! No man knoweth the hour of God's coming.
Therefore watch! But how shall he watch"--and his voice to my hearing
had in it some element of prophecy--"how shall he watch who swings
ever from elation to despair, and knows no resting-place between
them?"
He spoke very quietly, and so left me alone. I do not know that I am
inclined now to set great store upon the words. They seem almost to
present some such theory as children and men over-occupied with
book-learning are wont to fondle. But after he had left me alone, I
sat with his discourse overlaying me like an appalling shadow. The
sunlight in the court without lost its brightness; the very room
darkened within. I saw my whole life before me, a procession of
innumerable hours. Hooded and cloaked, they passed me with silent
feet. I sought to distinguish between them. I chose at random from
amongst them. "This," I cried, in a veritable fear--"this is the
hour;" and even as I spoke, one that had passed threw back the hood
and turned on me a sorrowing face. So would the hour come, and so
unready should I be to challenge it! My fear swelled to a panic; it
bore me company all that day as I made my purchases in the streets, as
I took leave of my companions, as I passed out of the Porte St.
Antoine. It was with me, too, in the quiet evening long after the
spires of Paris had vanished behind me, when I was riding with my
steward at my back across that open country of windmills and poplar
trees on the highroad to Lorraine.